Podcast: The Ride - Stunt Show Showdown

Episode Date: October 27, 2017

Today, three stunt shows go head-to-head in a fake fight for stunt dominance. Mike takes on the Batman Stunt Show from Six Flags Great America, Scott goes to the mat for Universal Hollywood's Spider-Man Rocks, and Jason fights to the death for Islands of Adventure's Eighth Voyage of Sindbad. Plus, we talk the upcoming Tron and Harry Potter coasters in Florida (and some scarring childhood memories).  Batman Stunt Show https://youtu.be/GktYTlZpKzI Spider-Man Rocks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsZL7IyYl74 The Eighth Voyage of Sindbad https://youtu.be/Ak01pwINYXk Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/ FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Feral Audio welcome to podcast the ride a theme park podcast hosted by three childless men in their 30s. We're part of Feral Audio. I'm Jason Sheridan. Joining me as always, Mike Carlson. Hello. And Scott Gairdner. It's me. Our subject today is stunt shows at the theme parks. But before that, we were going to talk about some news. Yeah, I think we're, so yeah, we're just, look, we're a bunch of theme park junkies who love reading up on all the news and rumors.

And anytime there's a juicy one, like we really dig in, we love to discuss. And we're all, what were we talking about? We're going to talk about, there's a, you know. It's been an exciting time for not just rumors but news because we're still, I don't know when this will come out exactly, but we're still in the aftershocks of the D23 Expo at which many theme park developments were announced, including two, well, I guess not all of this was announced at D23 because one's Universal, but we had two new roller coasters on the way for all you Florida theme park fans,

and we wanted to talk about them for a minute. Heading to Orlando, one at Universal, one at Disney. The Walt Disney World is getting the Tron roller coaster from Shanghai Disney. Which, if you don't know that, yeah, there's a Disneyland in Shanghai now. And their most popular well-rated ride is a Tron-themed roller coaster, which I don't think any of us have been to Shanghai. No, not yet. Don't withhold it if you have gone. Please sort of let me know that.

But no, we haven't been, but we've probably all watched ride-throughs of it. It looks incredible just architecturally. It's this cool future pod thing. It looks like an Olympic stadium. It's just such a neat- looking roller coaster. You're on a light cycle, so it's a neon motorcycle, essentially. You go inside and outside. It's incredible. And you're actually

hunched over it like a motorcycle, which is similar to the Avatar experience, which is just open where you're straddling it like a banshee. So it's a straddle ride. That is an innovation, I feel like, in the last so many years, is straddling the ride vehicle. I feel like it's a straddle ride. That is an innovation, I feel like, in the last so many years, is straddling the ride vehicle.

I feel like that's a newer thing. Am I wrong? It's a fantasy that's been recently unlocked. Yeah. Well, it is new since the E.T. adventure, certainly, which we already talked about. That's basically just the chair you're sitting in. You're not really on a bike seat,

but now you get the thrill of riding a fake bike in the theme parks. This is also a common theme park trope that I see, which is that people love an attraction or a ride that is based on a movie they could not care less about. Like the Waterworld, we're talking about stunt shows today, the Water stunt show people love that people did not see that movie people could not give a shit about water world the movie people really didn't care about that last tron movie it seemed like they liked like the the design and like uh the movie was cool and i feel like the soundtrack was the thing that people liked most from that movie it provoked a bunch of new Daft Punk music, which is good news for the world. So people were excited. But yeah, I don't know if anybody loved the film necessarily. The amount of time I've spent talking about and thinking about Tron versus my actual, where I would grade those movies.

They're both kind of the same movie. 1982 Tron and 2010 Tron are kind of the same movie where there is a bike sequence that is unbelievable and there is a disc sequence that is unbelievable and the rest is a little dull and a little turgid and confusing,

I think. The first 15 minutes, I remember watching it six months ago and going, whoa, what the this doesn't even track this the logic of this people also forget that uh I think I was watching the new one forgetting that Tron was a character and when the character Tron showed up and people are like Tron I think I in my head Tron is always that's where they are they're in the Tron or they're after the Tron. I can never, again, I love these movies. There was a clip of Tron that played at a wedding mix that I made.

Tron was represented at my wedding. And I still forgot that Tron was a guy. They're talking about doing another Tron as well. They want a Jared Leto Tron movie. That's the rumor, at least right now. The Joker himself. Jared Leto. Hot Topic Joker, Jared Leto, will be the newest... Is he gonna be Tron?

Is he gonna be Tron? Is there any rumor about him playing... Jeff Bridges is not Tron. He's a... What's his character's name? Can we remember this? People are dying listening to this right now. There's probably the few people who've found this podcast already are like big Tron heads and what are they doing?

They're stumbling around the guy's name. Butchering the lore of Tom Tron. But I don't remember, actually. Oh, well. Sorry, guys. Jared Leto is going to play the evil piece of code 00110101. Evil binary code. Boy, he's the nastiest code you ever saw.

It's a real living virus. Is that real or is that a joke? Because I'm realizing I've never seen either of these movies all the way through. It's dry enough that it could be a joke. Yeah, it could be, right? Yeah, that it could not be a joke. No, I have no idea. Look, we aren't a movie news podcast.

We don't care about movies or see them. We go on the rides, and look, the ride is almost the perfect Tron mechanism to have out there because it's the colors and the lights and the music and nothing else. No story. The aesthetic. I feel like the aesthetic of both movies had an effect on pop culture. Yeah, yes. And pop culture design.

Incredible aesthetic. When they came out. And, yeah, so there's one of those that exists already in Shanghai, and it's coming to Disney World, which is exciting. There's been a lot of talk about where does it go, because there's not a ton of space in Tomorrowland at the Magic Kingdom, and we thought, does it maybe take over the Speedway, which is the equivalent of the Autopia,

the little cars you drive around, but it is not taking over that space. They reclaimed some swampland off to the side of the Magic Kingdom, and it's going to go there. So all the rides stay intact. Yep, everything's staying put, and we get Tron next to Space Mountain. Two coasters in Tomorrowland. It's insane. Two giant e-ticket coasters right next to each other. The People Moover is intact.

I was concerned about that. But no, it's just going to be further back next to it. This might be where they were saving room to build the Persian resort. Really? There was going to be a Persian-themed resort. In the recent past, or is this like a 70s a while ago? Yeah, when there was going to be like resorts themed to different regions

or areas of the world around the Seven Seas Lagoon. So because there's the Polynesian and the Grand Floridian, but I feel like there was supposed to be like a Venetian-themed one and a Persian-themed one, and that I think they were working with

the government of Iran at the time that was eventually deposed in the Islamic Revolution, so that got scrapped. Yeah, that's not happening. They're not going to bring that back from the saddest fallout of these political events. I think it was supposed to that back from the blue sky phase. The saddest fallout of these political events.

I think it was supposed to be back past the contemporary, like in the area where this could stretch out to. Oh, gotcha. So in the ride, there will be a single Persian rug as a nod to the possible hotel. Keep your eagle eyes out for it. I'm excited about this news because it maybe opens up the possibility of the Tron coaster coming to Disneyland proper, the closest park to us. And I think Tomorrowland is really starting to struggle in terms of having great attractions in it. There's this intervention space, which I think is the most frustrating, best real estate probably in all of the Disney parks that nothing is happening to. I'm really hoping that Tron ends up there or maybe taking over the Autopia or submarine space in Disneyland. But I guess a lot of purists would not want the Autopia to go because it's an original Waltz attraction.

So is the submarines, I guess, a Waltz attraction, one that he oversaw and loved. So you don't want to see those go. But I don't know. I'd rather have the Tron thing. What about you? Sure, yeah. I'll take a Tron thing. Terrible for the environment.

Autopia and the Tomorrowland Speedway just constantly smells awful and just constantly pumping out gas. The submarines, too, use up so much water. Like, they ran those during the multi-year California drought. So, yeah, if you don't know what the Autopia is, it's where a little kid can drive. It's on a track, and your kid can actually move it left and right a little bit, but it never can get off. You can never crash one car into another little kid or anything. It used to.

It used to not be on a track. People used to be able to ram each other. Honestly, that sounds more fun than the current ride there but i get it that's like it's they call it a transformative ride like the kid this is the first time a kid gets behind the wheel which by the way does a kid really need to get behind the wheel shouldn't can't they wait like why does an eight-year-old have to do that like that's like this is what the big thing in the theme park community is always like well this autopia ride this is a child will always remember his first time getting behind the wheel. And it's like, well, why doesn't he just wait till he's 15?

Like then he'll remember his real first time when he actually had control of a real car. I like to, if you're going to be on a track driving a car where you're not really driving anyway, I'd rather be on the one where you help Mr. Toad get to court and then get sentenced to hell. To hell. Yeah, that's a more interesting drive. I agree. Toad get to court and then get sentenced to hell. To hell. Yeah, that's a more interesting drive to me. I agree. It's more exciting. It's more fun. I don't know.

But maybe our kids, would kids be disappointed to not have that Autopia around anymore? I don't know. I feel like if I was a kid, I'd be like, do I want that shitty gas guzzling little car where I can't go anywhere cool, or do I want to go into the computer and race with blue and orange neon? I think it's the second one.

Kids chanting, Tron! Tron! Tron! Tron! We know it's a character. We know Tron is a character and not a concept. I didn't know it was a character. Yeah, well, learn something every day. So do you at home. Yeah, probably.

We're cutting them off left and right. Apologies. But so the other roller coaster that's coming to Florida, which I don't know much about, but if you guys want to talk about it, but there's a new Harry Potter coaster coming to Florida, the original Harry Potter land. Coming to Islands of Adventure next to the village of Hogsmeade. They are going to destroy what used to be called the Dueling Dragons roller coaster is now called Dragon Challenge. Is that right? Yeah, something. So, yeah, basically there was another land where the Harry Potter land now sits, and

there was already these two coasters that would duel, and they would have two different cars that would go at the same time, and it felt like, oh, my God, they're going to crash into each other. They never did. That was just a fun little thing, fun little gimmick. But then they rethemed them just and called them Dragon and barely added any sort of, like, they added a little line, a little queue things, but, like, there was never much, like,

theming on the actual ride itself. They no longer duel. Did the dueling go away? The dueling went away. That went away for, like, a safety reason. Like, stuff would fly out of people's pockets in one coaster and hit the people in the other coaster. Which is fun. Stray nickels flipping out in people's eyes.

So a wallet hits you smack in the face? I think that is what happened. Did someone die? Oh, God. I don't think so. I don't think so, but I feel like someone did get injured and may have been lost. I don't think it was as bad, though, as the Fabio bird incident on the roller coaster. Oh, no.

If anyone remembers this, Fabio was on a roller coaster. I don't remember which one it was, but he got hit in the face with a bird and it busted him open. And he got off the ride and he was bleeding profusely from his head. But I don't think anything that bad happened. I think it was just some minor safety issues. But it was bound to happen. He's got kind of a big head. Of course.

How could it not? There were plenty of other... It's a glass half full scenario. We should count the people on the coaster who didn't get hit in the head rather than the one lunkhead who did. You would think you'd get hit in the head with than the one uh lunkhead who did that is i mean you would think you get hit in the head with a bird very often on a roller coaster because they're yeah you know birds hang out on some of those things i guess they're they're moving pretty quickly so the

birds maybe don't linger but like they're flying they fly everywhere they don't know what they are are there ever cases you think of uh you know, roller coasters go flying by, whizzing by. Some of them are themed after birds or have wings. That's true. Do birds ever think that a roller coaster car is a fellow bird that they can meet with? Is their dear friend? I went straight to the sexual implications. Oh, okay.

That's very sweet, striking up a friendship with a roller coaster car. That's beautiful. Maybe that's one to try to get pixar on board i was gonna say that does sound like a pixar movie where like a little bird's friend is a roller coaster and then the evil heads of the roller coaster company come and re-theme it take the bird the bird theming off of the cars and change it to like a rocket or no something like like something bad like like uh what's bad like a like an oil drilling machine an oil drilling machine or a gun a big gun that you sit in and you ride around you're you are a bullet you are yeah that's good that's good the station fires you this station is shaped like a giant gun and you fire out of it that's actually really

great that's a great mario that should be a cannon and you should be in the bomb oh yeah you should be that giant bomb sure you should shoot around it's kind of a shame that the mario land is only the there's only so much like you could do an entire mario park i think probably every element of just mario forget the rest of Nintendo, could be an entire ride in and of itself. Yeah, because he's had so many different games and Mario Sunshine and Mario Galaxy. There's a lot of worlds this little man has explored. I want them to build every single iteration of Mario Kart. I'm not happy with just the one.

Let's get Sunshine. Let's get Double Dash. I think every single one of them could be its own attraction. Well, the plan's get Sunshine. Let's get Double Dash. I think every single one of them could be its own attraction. Well, the plans also leaked. See, this is getting off topic. But the plans leaked, or at least a picture of what the ride would look like, the Mario Kart ride, which is coming to both coasts and Japan. And it looks like they've crammed seven different levels in one ride. It's pretty insane.

Cool. And it's pretty insane. Cool. And it's got like, yeah, like it's got the castle level. It's got, I think it says Moo Moo Farm. I think it has whatever the normal one is, Mushroom Kingdom. So I do think they're cramming as much as they can into one ride if this thing is accurate. If this piece of leaked art is accurate, I, hopefully the leaker doesn't get arrested. Hopefully Trump pardons this leaker. Trump doesn't like leakers, and that includes the themed entertainment industry message

board. I like to be surprised. What's happened to surprises? We got no surprises anymore. I have to go to Universal, and I want to be on Wario's, what is it called? Damn it. That joke was going to be good. Wario's Stadium. That's it. I want to be on Wario's, what is it called? Damn it, that joke was going to be good. Wario's Stadium, that's it.

I want to go to Wario's Stadium and not know what's happening. I don't want to know where the ramps are. I don't want to see the ramps. Don't tell me about the ramps. Waluigi, I want to see my friend Waluigi. He's a high quality person. I recently had a meeting with him and then an undisclosed second meeting with him. So then I love more than going out with Waluigi, disclosing one meeting and not the other.

There's probably Trump-Waluigi memes already that we haven't seen. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's got to be, like, because Waluigi's a bad guy. Wario is a bad guy. Trump, bad guy. Well, if he were here, maybe he'd make the argument. I'm not such a bad guy. Why do you think I'm a bad guy?

Maybe there should be another. Maybe there should be Wah Trump. Maybe I'm the good guy. I'm super Trump, and then we need Wah Trump. Yeah. Or would Pence be Wah Luigi? Because he's slimmer.

He cuts a slimmer silhouette. If you're just going for looks, sure, Pence is Wah Luigi. But I don't know, personality-wise, I think they're worlds apart. Yeah, I guess that's true. Yeah.

Anyway, Harry Potter. The Harry Potter roller coaster. They haven't really announced much about this roller coaster. Presumably it will be smaller scale because families are going to want to ride it. The dragon coaster that's there now is a pretty intense intense like looping roller coaster so this one's probably going to be smaller hopefully not as small as like the unicorn challenge this could be inside like sure the the old one was just like one of the ones where your legs dangle which i hate like legs dangling like that scares me i feel like somebody's gonna pull me like i'm

gonna slip right through and fall. Yeah. Or I'm going to slide out and hit a man in the face going the other way. So, yeah, I would hope it was, all I want, look, I want it highly themed. I want a lot of robots. This is basically what I want for every ride. Highly themed, a lot of robots, and a little bit of excitement. Doesn't need a ton, just a little.

Yeah. little bit of excitement doesn't need a ton just a little yeah i uh but what i hope does not occur as this coaster is built is i hope they don't take out a coaster very nearby which has some history for me i think now this coaster is called flight of the hippogriff yeah which is what they put in uh it gets harry potter land here uh in california and it existed already in Florida. It used to be called something else like the Unicorn. I think it was just called the Flying Unicorn. The Flying Unicorn. Part of the Lost Continent section of the park that got

cannibalized for taking over for the Wizarding World got annexed, but they kept this little kitty coaster and I went on this ride probably right after the park opened in like 99 or 2000. I went with my family. And so we're ascending the first hill. I'm in one row and then behind me is my mom and my sister. And when we start going down the first drop, huge screams from my sister, just terrified, as terrified as could be.

It's a pretty tame coaster in the spectrum of things, but she is screaming and screaming. It just hit her really bad. My mom starts screaming and screaming as well. And I'm spending all the time thinking, this seems why is this? This seems fairly heightened to me. I wonder what's up. And then we got off the thing. My sister Kelly is really just, like, calming down, coming down from it.

And my mom is just, like, glaring angry. And I asked what happened. And apparently on that first drop, my sister got too scared. And she clutched my mom really hard and just kind of like grabbed wherever, not really looking. And it turned out that my sister was clutching onto my mom's boob really hard the entire coaster ride,

just clamped down on it. And it's made me laugh ever since that for that full 60 to 90 seconds, my sister, while squeezing a loop. A very disturbing, incestual moment in the Gardner family history. But it's history nonetheless. Don't tear it down.

Yeah. If I may, I have an upsetting anecdote about the dragon coaster and my family um so they they um when they reopened it for harry potter they kind of changed where you entered and the line and everything but where you used to enter there was like a series of like concrete steps and i think some big like fake dragons it was like clearly designed to be a photo spot. And you could get a photo in front of this like elaborate stonework. And you could get the coaster in the background. So I think I was like, too scared of it the first time. So I did not ride. And my dad was going to go race like, Oh, it's only like a 10 minute wait, I'd like to go ride it. And so he went to ride it himself.

And me and my mom, my brother are outside waiting. And she's like, Oh, go's only like a 10-minute wait. I'd like to go ride it. And so he went to ride it himself. And me and my mom and my brother are outside waiting. And she's like, oh, go stand over there. I'll take your guys' picture with the coaster in the background. And, you know, there's two other kids around our age, like, you know, 11 or 12 or so. And they're standing up there, too. And we just kind of, hey, hi. And we kind of stand like, well, we'll give some distance so we're not in their shot. Their mother, who I can only describe as an unhinged southern woman, was apparently not taking a still photo, was taking video and just started screaming at the three of us.

Like, you all, you get out of there. You get out. Hey, we were here first. We're taking that. My mom's like, okay, okay. Sorry, we were just taking a picture. We didn't know. She's like, don't you talk.

You watch yourself. And started yelling at us. And we're like, what is happening? And definitely, my mom's like, okay, just calm down. We're families at a theme park. And eventually, the woman went with like, fine, have a nice day, asshole.

Like, or like something. And it was like very upsetting to all. And they walked away, but we're just like, what happened? Like, we were just so upset by this.

And we were just like despondent at like this woman who just screamed at us. And my dad comes off and goes like, Hey, that was a pretty fun coat. What's wrong? What's wrong with you? I was like, well, I, this woman who just screamed at us. And my dad comes off and goes like, hey, that was a pretty fun coat. What's wrong? What's wrong with you? I was like, well, this woman, this strange woman just called mom an asshole.

She may have called her a bitch. And there was a lot of kids around. And her kids were there. And we were also there. And we were like little dorky children like little and I was just like it was like a terrifying a very terrifying experience of watching like a stranger

yell at another stranger and you're sure it was not a streetmosphere character no it was not a streetmosphere character like the sassy fountain who will who will roast you oh that's right we talked about that sassy fountain

a couple episodes ago that's why you can't have that sassy fountain around it starts giving people license to be sassy in their own real lives she probably just was inspired next person who gets in my way I'm calling a bitch it was like later in the day.

It was probably around like five or six or so. So when people are starting, like the humidity is getting to you and it's like you either need to go back to the hotel and just sit in the air conditioning for a while or you just need to like have a sit and have a drink. Because if you don't rest at those Florida parks, you really start to go a little mad from the heat. I think it's a fun thing about all of us as adults getting to go to Disneyland and getting to do it sort of unencumbered and without the extreme threat of

pure, raw mental breakdown, which is something that you know is happening all around you at every theme park you go to. But we're the calm ones with a glass of wine love and life it's uh yeah it's a great great virtue to uh not be dragging like seven screaming kids around we're really living the dream yep okay well let's let's look we were came we came here for a very important reason today to talk about stunt shows at theme parks.

That's correct. And we were all talking about this, like how should we approach this, because there are many, many different stunt shows. And I think we've all picked stunt shows that each of us have seen, but the others have not. Yes. That's correct? Roughly so, yes. Right. seen but the others have not yes that's correct roughly so yes right um we're all majoring in a particular stunt show right on this day on this recording and i think um it's safe to say the ones

we all picked are kind of weird sure they're all a little insane yeah yeah um for various reasons from what i from what i know about yours but correct me if i'm wrong these are not i don't think the iconic uh great iconic great stunt show. They aren't the best stunt shows in the theme park world. For that, you'd have to turn to potentially that Waterworld show, which is an actually fantastic stunt show here at Universal Studios Hollywood. Yeah. Or the Indiana Jones is a solid one.

But, yeah, these are all a little odd. Yeah, and we've talked about doing the bigger stunt shows in the future. Oh, that's the plan. This is a themed episode. We're each tackling a particular stunt show, but it's part one. Yeah, we'll do more. We'll leave you in

suspense. So, yeah, I mean, anything to say about... We haven't talked about stunt shows in general. They are not at every theme park. They are not at Disneyland or the Magic Kingdom or at Epcot, but they're at a ton of theme parks, especially Universal Studios. Six Flags, I feel like a big player in the stunt show game as well. I was thinking about the genre in general and how you could vaguely divide it into two.

There is the type of stunt show that's a little more hand-to-hand combat-based that's more about fight choreography, and then there's the varietal that's more like motors and gear and cars and trucks and jet skis and boats, if you're really lucky, which are probably done on like a bigger scale. It's probably a moat or a river of some kind separating you from the stunt performers.

And the possibility of a splash zone, which is always an exciting possibility. They all do borrow, like, they all have a bag of tricks, though, and, like, I feel like we're going to find, like, 85% overlap in all of these stunt shows. Because I was re-watching the one I'm picking, and I was like, oh, yeah, these are all the tricks they use in every single show. Every show seems to have a very similar format, and, like, the same flames that come up at the end, and it's, like, the same, the end. And it's like the same,

like, Ooh, it's hot in here, but like it's in the jaws ride and it's in like any studio tour, whether it's the old MGM studio tour or whether it's the Hollywood universal tour out here, there's just like, there's like 10 tricks I feel like. Yeah.

And these, these all need to be performed. Like the thing about these stunt shows is you were seeing, like, live stunt performers performing, like, movie-quality stunts. But, like, when you actually film a stunt in a movie, it's an insanely labor-intensive of, like, well, we're doing that one thing today, right? Or we're doing, like, two things today. And you have to have, like, a lot of medical staff there. You have to have a lot of medical staff there. You have to have a lot of safety people there. Sometimes fire departments.

Ideally. Ideally, yeah. And you have to have a lot of speeches. A guy has to gather everybody up and, Okay, ladies and gentlemen, today we have open ammo live on the set. And it always is done in a way such as to freak you out. But also the guy loves giving the stunt speech more than anything in the world. He's so happy to give the scary speech and to show off the barrel of the gun.

And this can't hurt you, however. We need you to maintain a safe distance from the... I get excited. I've been on some things with some stunts. It is an exciting moment when the guy gathers you up and gives the mean speech. It's exciting. It's exciting unless you're doing it like I had to do once when I had to be on a hang glider on a mountain. I mean, I wasn't jumping off the mountain, but I had to wear a giant hang glider.

And about 3 p.m., the mean guy gathered everyone up. He's like, the winds are too strong to open up a hang glider. And like about 3 p.m., the mean guy gathered everyone up. And he's like, the winds are too strong to open up a hang glider. The winds will take you. They will take you and pull you off the mountain if we were to do it right now. So we're not going to be able to actually open the hang glider. We will see how it is later. And I'm like, Jesus Christ. Like, I don't want to die on a mountain when we're shooting something where the wind just catches me and takes me away like a feather.

I just drift away. Which, God knows, maybe that's just the best way to go. But I didn't want to. So at 5 o'clock, the winds, in my opinion, had not died down. But when you're on a commercial set, time is money. We've got to make the shot, baby. And the wind is all right. What we're going to do now is just have a couple PAs hold on to the side of the

of the hang glider and i'm like oh jesus christ seriously and like they you're not doing a jump you're but you're on the side of a mountain in a precarious place where you could get lifted away like a forest gump feather we're up very very like at the top of the mountains and like glendale or something wherever that is like way up there. And then they also were like, we're not going to lock you in either. We're not going to lock you into the hang glider. So if the wind does take you, it'll just fly. So I'm like, okay, remember to release your grip on it.

Because if you don't, you'll be taken with. It'll just fly. That sounds fine. Yeah. So I did it. I just have to run like, the problem was then I was like feeling a little better. And then I would have to run like 50 feet with it. The problem is it's heavy as shit.

So I did it about 10 to 15 times and just my back just was killing me for two or three days. It was horrible. Then I took a muscle relaxer and it was better. But yeah, no, that's dangerous stuff. Stunts are dangerous. You didn't get hurt. They didn't have to like, I'm imagining this area where you did fly away and got banged up like Homer in the gorge. And then they had to spend weeks painting out all of your cuts and wounds and abrasions to make you look like a...

Whoever cleans up the movie stars in post on computers would have had to really work overtime on my battered face. We gotta, oh god, this is a big thing. We gotta kick it to the guy who's making Jeff Bridges younger. The guy who's taking out Henry Cavill's mustache in that Justice League movie. Wait, he had a mustache he wasn't willing to part with? No, no. This is new. This is breaking news as we hear this. They're doing reshoots

on the Justice League movie, but Henry Cavill had already started shooting the new Mission Impossible movie where his character I guess he grew a mustache for the character and Paramount said you cannot shave. You cannot shave. So there are pictures on set of Henry Cavill in a Superman outfit, and he's got a mustache.

Oh, cool. And it's unnerving. It is weird to see Superman with a mustache. Sounds good to me. And they're going to digitally remove it. Okay, okay. Wow, wow. There'll be like a $50,000 budget on taking out his mustache at every shot.

Yeah. Because who knows how much. So if you're a barely paid intern setting up the tracking markers on Henry Cavill's face, maybe listening to this to pass the time. I hope you're having fun and well hang in there, buddy. Godspeed, champ. So the point you were making is that- Oh, stunt shows, yeah. That could hurt you. Yeah, it's dangerous. I think that the point you were making is that oh stunt shows yeah that could

hurt you yeah that's what you're saying yeah they're very dangerous but in the parks these stunt shows you need a bunch of big like set pieces in a row so like acrobatic fighting stunts uh water stunts falls from great height stunts um fire pyrotechnics. A lot of these have explosions. You've got to figure out little bits you can do in between so that it's not just one guy out there for 20 minutes hoofing it and moving from jet ski to a ladder to an explosion to getting lit on fire. You've got to figure out little diversions.

I feel like a lot of stunt shows have some kooky comic relief that is not necessarily a stunt just to, like, give the stunt folks a break. Or if it's the type of stunt show that is the making of stunts and they can break the fourth wall, then maybe they send the director out there to say, and cut. And then he tells you a little bit about how stunts are done. And he kills the time. Yeah. There is. He tells you a little bit about how stunts are done, and he kills the time. Yeah. There is, oh, the other thing is that this has to be repeated.

Whatever you set up, the show has to be repeated like three to six times a day, depending on how many times they're running it. They're very impressive endeavors. Last week I was slagging on shows in general. Not the effort that anyone puts into shows, but just I find a lot of the theme park shows kind of like generic and bleh. Not stunt shows, though. These are

impressive. And I've always had a little fascination with them. I should mention real fast, I did this animated show, Moonbeam City, and I did an episode that went into a theme park stunt show, so I got to make up what one of those would be and it was a the movie cities about police officers so i made up a police themed stunt show i called it the the police brew totally rev and roll stunt extravaganza uh i had so much

fun i worked on making up this plot so much more than I did the full half-hour actual plot of the episode. And I had to make up, like, the hero and the villain. And the good cop was named Officer Speed Damon. And the bad one was kind of a Dick Tracy villain named Don Fatsoli. So it was very fun to get to, like, delve into that and the various tropes. Also, like, this had the thing. It's in a lot of stuff where the villain is undercut by somebody pulling his pants down. He's wearing heart boxers, boxers with hearts on them.

And then the thing where the guy gets shoved into a little pit and then a bunch of confetti comes up. There's a lot of fun tropes, too. Is Moonbeam... We may as well plug it. Is it streaming somewhere? I forget. You can buy it on iTunes, or you can torrent it on weird Russian websites. That's it?

That's pretty much, oh boy, it's a whole thing. I'm sorry. Or, actually, it recently ended up being streaming on Comedy Central Australia's website. For free? So check it out there. For free, yes. You can sit through an ad or two, but it's For free. So check it out there for free, yes. You can sit through an ad or two, but it's all up there.

Check it out. There's various ways to, or just ask me, and I'll just send you pirated copies myself. Tweet at Scott. Check the email. Tweet at Scott. Please send me the full episode series.

Full res. Yeah. If you give me some disk space on which to post the show, I will send you the highest res straight from the computer version. Why not? Somebody stop me. That's a podcast to ride promise, folks.

I'll send you a lot of gigs worth of cartoon. So anyways, yeah, we're all fascinated with these things, and let's talk about them a little bit so we each picked one and I wanted to propose just a ranking system at the end if you want to classify your stunt show as either a perfect aerial flip

or a mis-aimed kick in the dick which admittedly is maybe something you would want to see in a stunt show. Is there anything in between? Yeah, that's a real black and white system there. Yeah, that's true. That's sort of a good or bad.

Well, I couldn't think of a very good middle point, like what would be an okay stunt. What if the middle would just be a shoehorned-in topical joke. Because I've got some of those in mind, and I know they're present in some other ones. Oh, boy, that's right. As opposed to a ride which cannot change day to day, the live theme park performer is free to bring up events of the day. Although I wonder if, in today's highly charged political political atmosphere if maybe you aren't supposed to talk about our president or things related to him. Well, we've already done that today.

No, we can't. Oh, the theme parks. If you're on stage, if you're the deacon in the Waterworld show, are you allowed to good or bad address Donald Trump in any way? Well, they got into trouble for that a few years ago at, I guess is this kind of a, the Bill and Ted show in Orlando at Halloween Horror Nights had, like, Obama and Mitt Romney.

Like, I think that's when they stopped doing it. Like, they had, like, a dance-off. They had a dance-off. I think they officially stopped doing it when they had a bunch of offensive stuff. There was definitely a gay Superman, and everyone's like, oh, this is not good. I was going to say, did Obama and Romney make out? Was that their fun joke? I think they had a breakdance-off, which I can't figure out the logic of that.

I like a breakdance off between two candidates. Look, if you had to guess who was going to win that breakdance war. Well, sure. Not to be. Not to stereotype. That's a good stereotype to land on, though. Oh, yeah. Literally, the real man, Barack Obama, I think, could probably pull off some great breakdancing.

Also, that seems like a lifetime ago, 2012. The 2012 election seems like such a simpler time than the horror show we live in now. I think about it all the time, and you saw it a little bit in the lead-up to this election, how a couple of Pizza Hut or that kind of thing tried to do the typical ad campaign that's like, you know, vote for the, like, making fun of the election, or like, tensions are high, you know, vote for that, like making fun of the election or like tensions are high. You know, why not chill out with a slice of pizza? And you feel like even like the tamest or any, if you ever saw any art where like a

donkey and a elephant are in boxing gloves and hey, put them up. You can't even, that is upsetting. Like there's no such thing as like friendly election comedy anymore. It's gone. It's comedy anymore it's gone no it's not it's completely humorless okay let's talk about let's talk about shows um who wants to go who thinks theirs is the least ridiculous i feel like we should build i feel it might be mine i think mine might be yours i don't know all right these are all have to be probably in a pretty inoffensive but but mine is pretty standard.

Well, I think whichever one you think illustrates what is a better example of the typical theme park stunt show. All right. Well, I'll go first. Mike, you go first. We'll never know. Scott, I think you should go last, knowing what I know about yours. It's weird. Lottery, yeah.

So I picked the Batman stunt show from from six flags great america which is from where i'm from um the park is in gurney illinois um and i saw it a lot when it opened in 1993 and it lasted for a couple years and i'm watching this last so i'll give you a quick overview so when we'll post all these links online so you get to watch like grainy like home movie quality footage of all of these different stunts oh yeah we're not going to play any clips because these things are like all these stunts are like barely recorded and if they are i noticed in looking on youtube a lot of them are posted by the literal stunt performers who were in the show which i think is a nice level of uh uh uh you know of straight you know, straight from the person.

They're usually done in large theaters or outdoor amphitheaters, so kind of hard for, like, a consumer camera in the audience to, like, pick up the audio that well. It's meant to be experienced live. Yeah. So, yeah, so this video, so really my memory is, I have a little memory of it and then this video. So there's an emcee, and he's he's like doing a lot of warm-up stuff. And he's like, you know, put your trash in the back garbage cans and stuff. And like funny, really funny jokes like that.

And then he says stuff like, who likes to party? Which I was like, I don't know, that doesn't really. Wait, Batman says it? No, no, this is the MC. Oh, the MC. Yeah, Batman's not out yet. Who's dressed as what? What is he?

He just has like a polo on. He's an employee of Six Flags. He's like the liveliest employee they have probably. He's a local theater performer maybe. And then they're like. Ended up being Stephen Colbert. Current Second City student. Oh, that's true.

And he does weird stuff where he's like, who has the best Tarzan yell? And the camera isn't on the people, so you just hear like, oh, oh, oh, which is very funny. I feel like if you asked that question to an audience today, people would be like, what the fuck are you talking about? Who is Tarzan and what does he sound like? I have no clue. But 93 was a different time. Tarzan was still fresh in our minds. So, yeah.

So the setting of this whole thing is like there's a big warehouse and it's Ace Chemicals, which is the famous place where the Joker falls into a vat of acid and becomes the Joker. And then there's like a garage. So while we're playing this too like party man by prince is playing because it's it's kind of based on you know the first batman movie which prince did the soundtrack for and uh the audio on the audio cuts out i don't know if like prince's estate like leveled a complaint against this particular video but all of a sudden like there's a snippet of prince and the audio cuts out for like a straight minute so i don't know maybe at a certain point when prince like really

had his lawyers going after people on youtube which there was a time when you couldn't find anything by prince like they came after this poor person's home movie with a like a real green like a shitty sounding party man played in an arena it's's like, I want that gone from the internet. I always imagine Prince himself filling out the copyright compliance forms on YouTube. There's something about it. It just always seems like something he might get up to at 4 a.m. Well, you know, the 400th night in a row not sleeping. Dear YouTube, there's a video from Six Flags Great America where 45 seconds of Party Man plays

I would appreciate you taking it down this is a displeasure to me yeah maybe it's probably more mean it's probably more mean so the thing starts

with like kind of Batman-y music it sounds all off to me it sounds like maybe they didn't get the full Batman score but it sounds Batman-ish it's kind of Danny Elfman.

It's yeah, it is. But I feel like there's like a couple notes changed, but maybe that's just the, uh, way that the audio is aged on the tape, the VHS tape. So the,

the whole thing starts on Bruce and Vicky Vale are going to a party and there's like one table with food on it. And then there's a giant large Turkey, like a Turkey that must be like eight by eight and it's roasting like it's outside or something and it doesn't make any sense it'll be at a fancy dinner party but they were like well this reads like uh but like like fancy people eating i guess if it's feeding 300 people then sure i guess yeah so i guess it's like a weird themed party but really it's all just bruce and Vicky like dancing for 10 seconds.

And then here come the motorbikes. Two or three guys on motorcycles like fly out and fly over. And then this song, which I couldn't quite make out, which I could hear like a line is like born to ride. We were born to ride. Hell yes. It wasn't a song I recognized, but it sounded familiar. It's not I love LA. It is. a song I recognized, but it sounded familiar. It's not I Love L.A. It is.

Born to ride. I love Gotham City. No, it was not I Love L.A. It sounded like Highway to the Danger Zone, but it had the words Born to Ride in it. Maybe this is a song that I'm just not familiar with. It's Gotham City's biggest music artist. Right. And then you got your standard stuff people shooting a tommy gun and it's like flash bangs that are happening against walls and people are like like scurrying up posts and then

like other like the the punches that you can clearly even see from a hundred feet away miss wildly but like like you hear the noise and the guy goes, like flips and flips four feet onto a pad that's clearly a pad and then they do the thing where they cut. So it's a stunt show,

but the reality is is that we're just watching some people perform and I should have actually said this at first. The emcee explains to us that he's not only just the emcee and the host,

he's the second unit director for this. That late in the game? Yeah. The logic has changed. He explains that, yeah, he is in charge of shooting the action for this, which doesn't really make sense because what are we shooting? We're not shooting anything. And nothing else in Six Flags is movie themed, so yeah.

Yeah, there's some Looney Tunes stuff. I think there was a Six Flags and maybe it was here too, but they had like Movie World. Okay. But it was a lot of loose. But it's weird they just weren't like, here's a show with Batman. I don't know why they had to act like,

we're showing you how the movies are made. I feel like the one at Great Adventure in New Jersey did at some point switch the Batman show to just like, the bad guys are here and Batman's going to fight them. That's great. I mean, that's so much better. Yeah. And then I also wrote the guy's name down, the host.

This is the best I can hear. He goes, hi, I'm Roderick Dean Wells, host and second unit director. That's a second unit director is a film crew that films the dangerous action sequences and then they do like a whole bit with it I remember this, this is my memory as a child that they do a bit where they ask for an audience

participate, like an audience member to come up and a guy like this is not in the video but this is my recollection a guy like jumps from the audience into the pit and as a kid I thought it was real, I thought there was some maniac who had thrown himself in the pit. Obviously, this is a plant. And then they proceed to like knock this guy around the whole show.

Yeah. Wow. Which is, are you nodding because yours has something like this? No, it just happens. It's a trope. It's a trope. It's a stunt show trope where there's a fake audience plant and everyone laughs at him getting like hurt. Usually has a whole line. We're all like, ha ha, that audience plant and everyone laughs at him getting hurt. Usually has a Hawaiian...

That normal guy is an idiot and he got hurt. Usually really is in a cartoonishly touristy Hawaiian shirt, baseball cap. At Disney, a goofy hat. Yeah. Then there's just different scenes and then they'll preface

it by like, Batman is headed to ace photographer... Jesus Christ, I wrote it down wrong. means then then like they'll they'll preface it by like batman is headed to ace photographer uh or his hate excuse me jesus christ i wrote it down wrong batman is headed to ace chemicals and photographer vicky vale thinks this is her chance to take a picture of batman but it's a trick by the joker and then like joke like vicky vale beats up a bunch of goons and then the joker falls into chemicals but joker already has his joker makeup on and also the joker looks like shit this is a problem i have is that joker really doesn't look like the jack nicholson joker he Joker falls into chemicals, but Joker already has his Joker makeup on. And also, the Joker looks like shit. This is a problem I have, is that Joker really doesn't look like the Jack Nicholson Joker.

He doesn't look like the Cesar Romero Joker. He looks like he has a generic Halloween mask, and his clothes look like crap. And I was looking at other videos from different Batman stunt shows, and there's one with the Penguin as the main antagonist. It's almost the same show, except the Penguin's in it, and it's so much better. Penguin is dressed like Burgess Meredith. He has his own penguin song about running for mayor. They wrote an original song.

And I was like, God damn, this is so much better than this joke, this crappy Joker. Yeah. Also, this means the Joker fell in the vat twice. Yeah, but he didn't. He fell in the vat twice also ace chemicals despite an insane occupational uh incident where a man fell into a chemical vat they're like all right well we filed all the appropriate reports with the government time to reopen the old chemical plant now look there's a lot of problems in gotham city so yes obviously i guess that's true there's probably some lobbying

going on at ace chemicals that would continue would make the operation of it continue. They did have to put a bee up on the outside. Oh, sure. They had to put a bee in the window. Batman ziplines in from the audience, which is kind of cool. It's pretty slow, though. It's just like a slow man coming down from the audience section into like a little elevated area you know punching it my favorite part of it i think is that the batmobile is there

and it is the batmobile from the first movie it's cool looking like it's a full thing batmobile gets a big pop the audience loves it yeah and then they do this whole bit where batman controls the batmobile with his voice so he pops out to go investigate into the chemical warehouse, and he goes, Batmobile, wait for me at Wayne Manor, which makes no sense. I don't know why he would send the car home. Park Batmobile. Go park where we live.

Right, yeah. No, I don't know. You've done a good job so far. Go ahead and crack off for the day. So there's clearly a guy in there driving it. It's not the guy playing Batman. And then they do a whole bit where Joker finds it. And then they keep saying, the Joker starts to try to take control of it.

And he's like, Batmobile, come, come, Batmobile, come. So they're talking like a dog. And then he can't get it to work. And then Batman comes out and goes, Batmobile, come. And they keep saying that, which I'm not trying to be dirty. They just keep saying Batmobile, comma, come. And then finally, like, Joker gets in there, and Batman realizes that they have a fight while the whole thing's going on.

And I'm thinking also this is probably like a scene that was maybe added after 1992's Batman Returns where the Penguin takes control of the Batmobile. Do you remember this scene? He remotely controls it, which is also, by the way, if you haven't seen it in a while, one of the dirtiest scenes. They shoot it like the Penguin's having sex while he's kind of writhing around on the tiny Batmobile. Oh, okay. Sort of like humping a joystick a little bit.

Yeah, like they shoot him from under and he's like, whatever. And it's like, that is the horniest movie. Yeah, it's a very corny movie Batman Returns and also like upset it like I remember

as a kid seeing Danny DeVito like eating the fish eating raw fish and he's got like fish slurry running down his jaw

and it's it's gross it's weird yeah it's really gross real weird so I think feel like they maybe got influenced a little bit

with that sequence but like yeah and then there's some dune buggies come out and they chase the batmobile around and some guys flip off slightly higher places uh the audience plant like falls and everyone like i guess thinks that's great because as a kid i also was worried i remember not only was i a scared kid who was like i think this is real even though they're telling me i didn't know what a movie I didn't know how movies work but I was like this is kind of real I thought maybe there's a chance Batman or the Joker would come in and steal me or abduct

me because I when I would the first time I ever saw a play it was Peter Pan and during intermission the actors playing the pirates poked their head out of the dressing room to be dicks and I was getting like water in a water fountain and i looked behind me and they were like peering out and i was scared shitless i we had to go out my mom had to take me out like of the whole place

because i was so scared so i was a scared up until like i was 15 i thought most of these rides had a chance of being real and that they might follow you home they might the characters might haunt your reality. Right. Or kidnap you. They could have taken you. That's what I said, yeah. I thought Joker could possibly, if he ever got too close to me in the arena, which I'm sure he didn't, that he would certainly want to take me home back to Ace Chemicals and make me a little Joker boy.

Maybe push me in. So when I saw an audience member who I thought was a legitimate audience member participating and then falling from a great height I was scared I was worried that that man was dead the fourth wall was punctured for you and now you still don't know how many walls there are yeah where do they end I recall it being stressful for me as much as I liked Batman and I probably only at that point had not I had seen the 60s Batman, which is a lot friendlier than the Burton Batmans for, what was I, seven? No, six.

No, I was nine. So that's the Batman stunt show. As I said, we should do a whole episode on Batman and the theme parks because there's so many different stunt shows. There's one where there's water and jet skis. There's one where the Riddler is the bad guy and it's batman forever uh i think i saw that one i think i would have seen that at six flags yeah there's also a ton of unbuilt batman stuff which is very interesting to read about and see the concept art about right so mine is pretty normal pretty standard i i didn't wasn't shocked by anything, but, you know, your standard stunt show bullshit, like all that.

What do you think? Am I the lowest? Do you think yours is weirder? I think mine's a little weirder. Okay. Well, hit us. Okay. Oh, wait.

You want to rank it? Oh, yeah. What were the two choices or three? Perfect aerial flip, missame kick in the dick, or in the middle, topical reference. I mean, it's... A flat topical reference. I mean, a flat topical reference. Honestly, when I was watching

the one with the penguin, which I think was Great Adventure, which was, I think in Milwaukee, is that right, Seymour White? Six Flags Great Adventure,

is that Milwaukee? That's in Jersey. Oh, it's Jersey, that's right. The penguin one, I thought was great. There was this, I was mentioning it before,

there was an original song, like he was in a better costume, some of the stunts looked better. Prince had not gotten his grubby paws. The audio was, you could hear all the audio. So I guess I'm going to say middle, because it's still like you got to see the original Batmobile. And that was cool. But I feel like I've seen better stunt shows.

But I also might be because I was traumatized by it, and I'm thinking of it negatively. Did it scare you a little bit today? Were you watching the TV and a little worried you might hear a rap at the door and it'd be a pirate or two? Oh, yeah. And I had a giant roast behind me, like the one at the party Bruce and Vicky had. Which I also forgot to mention that the bad guys kicked the roast over. Oh, no. During the first fight scene.

Party ruined. But at least they didn't dump it into the chemical pit and create some kind of giant turkey monster. Joker roast. Joker turkey. Which is a good idea also. That'd be a pretty big step for a stunt show to take in terms of the overall Batman narrative. Sure. Created a new villain, his turkey yeah um all right well so my show is also a uh a superhero show um i did not

see the show in person i think yours is the weirdest uh-huh okay okay uh i think i think possibly i i was thinking about talking about some of the other universal stunt shows that i actually did see in person, the Miami Vice show. I watched the Miami Vice show, and I'm like, there was a stunt show briefly based on Miami Vice, and before that, the A-Team. There's very little video that exists of the A-Team, and then Miami Vice I watched, and it's pretty cool. It's just dope. There wasn't a lot to, that's my review, done. It was a cool-ass show.

So there's nothing else to talk about. Then I was digging into the universal archives and realized there was something called spider-man rocks spider-man rocks ran from 2002 to 2004 uh and it's a little bit of a cheat because it's a half stunt show half musical but uh there are definitely stunts in it and and increasingly once Peter Parker gets transformed into Spider-Man. It's so, it's in the, it was done in the Castle Theater, which if you've ever been to Universal Studios, kind of on the upper lot, there's this thing shaped like a castle, which is, I think, sort of an odd, cursed location at Universal Studios. I think today there's just a thing called the Special Effects Stages there, which is sort of a remnant of the tour.

It's a thing. It's probably fine, but I feel like a lot of people skip it when they go there. There's been a myriad of strange things. The Beetlejuice's Graveyard Review was in there, which, if you don't know it, is this live show where Beetlejuice leads all of the now dark universe characters, Frankenstein and Dracula in a rollicking frightening

armada of songs I remember seeing the original musical Creature from the Black Lagoon musical there which is was not good it was bad, it was bad no it was upsetting

and is probably when was that like 10 years ago 8 years ago 2007 yeah and I was like

wow look they wrote an original short musical based on and then they had a full like boat on stage I was like

wow this is they really spent a lot of money on this and then once they started doing the show I was like like wow this is they really spent a lot of money on this and then once they started doing the show i was like oh no this is bad and there's so much like like early seasons of friends level gay panic in that show like there's wouldn't be universal studios without yeah uh that's screaming gay characters a A rich tradition at Universal Studios shows to have horrible stereotype characters.

The mincing, wrist-flipping gay characters. Yeah, and it was, I just remember being very, being like right in the middle of the theater, and it's like, oh, I can't leave. And it's, I was just like, oh, I don't want to be here. I don't want to watch this anymore. That might require talking about a little bit at some point, Creature from the Black Lagoon, the musical. It might be the worst thing I've seen in a theme park.

I remember that. That was when I worked there at Universal Studios, and they had a night where we all previewed the show. And, like, we were all, like, there aren't people around who are part of this, were there? Do we have to, like, make pleasantries with anyone involved in this show? Because, dear God. So it's sort of this odd, cursed location, I think, in the park. And a lot of things that are just there for a few years have slid in and out. And so Spider-Man Rex, I guess, not the worst one.

What with Creature from the Black Lagoon. But still, not anything that anyone particularly fell in love with. It seemed to be a way to just like jam Marvel and Spider-Man into the parks as quickly as possible with the success of the Tobey Maguire, the original of the 25 Spider-Man films. It was a, so it's kind of this Cliff Notes version of the Spider-Man story. Within the first minute they get out a narration that's like, you know, they say with great power comes great responsibility. I guess I learned that the hard way.

Oh, boy. That's me, Peter Parker. But I wouldn't always be. It just has that annoying sort of for 12-year-olds tone from the get-go. Like a kid in the 90s on a commercial selling soda. Like what Mithras quenched. old stone from the get-go. Like a kid in the 90s on a commercial selling soda. When I got my thurs

quenched. I'm not big, but one day I will be. The power of milk. Sometimes I'm called Spider-Man. I became Spider-Man after my fucking uncle ate shit. Serves up, dudes. Still a

post-youth talk the way michelangelo does still that's this is the voice two decades later uh it also the whole thing is kind of steeped in a uh in a vibe that uh jason i know you've talked about before the Marvel Cinematic Universe began, kind of all of the media involving Marvel all had the same veneer, which was kind of this like extremely generic rock. Just like rock for kids. That kind of rock that doesn't sound like any particular artist in the world. It's a little like the Power Rangers theme a little bit, too. Yeah, and in California Adventure right now, the promotion is the Summer of Heroes, and it's back. Like, the heroes, when the Avengers come out, they're riding, like, ATVs and stuff, and there's generic rock.

And you see it other places today, too, like that Wonder Woman in Batman v Superman and the new Wonder Woman movie. Her theme song is this rock and roll guitar. That's just what you used to do. Yeah, it's a superhero. Like royalty-free rock and roll music. It's music that sounds like what Toto makes today. It sounds like a 2007 Toto album. Shredden.

Marvel equals Shredden. So there's a lot of that kind of stuff. But also, this is a kind of a jukebox musical. I think there's like five performers all told, and they weave a lot of songs in and out of the show. Some of the biggest hits of 2002 appear in this show. There's a Let's Get Loud by J-Lo. I'm sure a song people are still very fond of. There was, oh, the Foo Fighters' My Hero appears in it at some point.

And also the Bonnie Tyler song We Need a Hero, which is an older one. That one comes back a few times. And then one that, like, there's just a straight up performance of like a kind of a clubby pop locky song that was so distant to me i had to look it up this song is called am to pm and it's by christina millian is that a uh trl hit anyone recalls i do not know that does not sound familiar to me well in the in the heights of 2002, you couldn't not include. Kids would storm out of the theater if they didn't hear their beloved AM to PM by Christina Milian. Can I ask?

This is a few years after the Marvel Mania restaurant was up at Universal. Oh, yeah. Right? That opened for like a year and a half maybe. It was sort of the gimmick was like it's planet hollywood but in the marvel universe so there's iron man suit armor and there's thor's hammer and there's professor x's hover chair like and here's uh expensive mac and cheese yeah named after wolverine somehow it did not last. Wolver-cheese. The characters, it looked not great.

And apparently the food was very bad. And in promotional materials, they were like, this is going to open in Universal Orlando, too. And as a little Marvel nerd, I was just like, I can't wait to eat at this goddamn Marvel restaurant. And it was just so bad. They're like, well, we're not making any more of those. Wow, wow.

The sad story of chain restaurants, or novelty restaurants that don't come to pass. I remember at Disney World, they even put out artwork for it, a David Copperfield magic-themed restaurant. I never ended up getting built. Still haven't used the space for it that they set aside for it.

God, really? Wow. And kids still have space in their dreams reserved for this restaurant that nothing has filled. I think one day it might just appear there. It's been the long con by old cops. Or it's a

Criss Angel restaurant or something. Fingers crossed. Anyway, yeah, so it's all the spider-man stuff uh super condensed uh he then scene one he gets bit by the spider he becomes a spider uh then it cuts to mary jane uh who is an actress who seems to be cast entirely based on upper body strength because her acting and her singing leave a little something to be desired. But then when she has to grab onto a wire at the end, perfect, nailed it.

Anyway, you see her out on the street and she is being ganged up on by two street toughs and they're sort of, you know, they got eyes on her. What's this girl all about? And they convey it by singing the song She Bangs by Ricky Martin, which my wife said is probably trying to capitalize on the William Hung American Idol popularity of the time. That adds up.

So wait, the story of this goes from Peter Parker gets bitten by a radioactive spider. Uncle Ben dies offstage. You got no Uncle Ben. No Uncle Ben representation. We cut to Mary Jane being menaced by street toughs. By two random people. Soundtrack to She Bangs. Singing She Bangs.

Which I think is a little unfair to Ricky Martin to recast his words of lust as being kind of rapey. You put him, you know, talk to me, tell me your name. Those aren't explicitly rapey, and I don't think it's fair to Mr. Martin. He's singing a consensual song, and then they were repurposing it for a non-consensual situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think a pretty unfair thing to level on that song. No, I think it's horrible.

And we all know Ricky Martin would never sexually abuse a woman. That's true, too. That's the last thing you'd want to do. So anyways, Mary Jane fends off two thugs with her purse, the ultimate weapon that any woman gets is a purse. I feel like we should say women don't fare well in these stunt shows. Almost never. Yeah.

They're always, yeah, and they're always needing to be rescued, or if they do take matters into their own hands and do it themselves, they always make a big deal of it. It's always that, hey, I'm strong, too. Whereas now I think if you started a new show, it would just happen. The female protagonist would just be doing the stunts, and you wouldn't have to give a sly nod. Girls can do it too.

Vicki Vale gets a couple, she beats up a couple goons, but then she loses and Batman has to save her. So I feel like they get a couple pity punches. It's in the old days. And then, yeah, then the man hero must come out. There was a show, sorry, then the man hero must come out. There was a show. Sorry, we're getting tangent heavy this time. There was a show called, like, Spy Girl that replaced the Batman show, like some generic thing.

And it was just an all-female, like, female protagonist. It seemed like Tomb Raider. Oh. So, you know, times did change. Wasn't there a Pamela Anderson show on television that was kind of a... VIP. VIP. Oh, okay, okay.

Vicky Irons Protections. Jason was a big VIP fan. VIP. I was more of a Tia Carrera's Relic Hunter fan. Sure, yeah. As far as the syndicated shows with attractive ladies. Right after Saturday morning cartoons. Did these not even air in Los Angeles?

I don't know. How about Cleopatra 2020? Does that seem to ring a bell for you? No, but maybe I just, maybe I hadn't been sexually awakened yet, so I wasn't eyeing these on Saturday afternoons. They were all syndicated, so they aired on different channels

at different times all over the country. Okay, so Mary- Check your local listings. Mary Jade is being menaced. She's being menaced by two thugs. The hits of the day play. She swats off two thugs. A third is immediately too much for her to handle.

She sees the third thug. Too much! Runs up into the scaffolding. Once she gets up there, I need a hero! Problem overflowed at three uh spider-man comes down saves her pretty then unrelated songs christina milian song then uh the green goblin floats down and says can spider-man come out to play and you don't get a sense really of why he became aware of Spider-Man. Spider-Man only vaguely helped thwart the three street thugs, and I don't think they were in league with the Green Goblin,

so it's unclear how Spider-Man ended up on his radar. Anyway, he shows up, and he's on the surfboard, and that's one thing you've got to give to it. Spider-Man is floating around. You get to see Spidey stunts. The Green Goblin is really close to the audience he's hovering carefully legally carefully over the audience on that uh on that hoverboard he's on uh so you get that uh at least which is if you're a young kid and a spider-man they give you

something you want um but then so it's like picking up speed a little bit and then there's a decent little fight between spider-man and the Green Goblin, which is literally interrupted by Mary Jane, who stops the fight, pushes the Green Goblin away, and starts singing Hey Baby by No Doubt, which I guess is a tactic to start getting him a little horny and getting his eyes off the fight prize, which does distract him for a second. And it works. He gets horny. Yeah, he's kind of leering at Mary Jane.

Once again, Mary Jane, pure sex object in this. It's not farewell, no. No, not really. It becomes a medley with the Moulin Rouge era Lady Marmalade. Whoa. Then, sort of without provokingoking it becomes a fight again uh the all the other extra dancers who were part of the show started singing a really listless version of another one bites the dust uh it also wore what is it good for uh the laziest saddest versions and this is the climax of the show and uh the green goblin is fighting spider

man at this point using uh what what seemed to me like nerf balls just like real soft vaguely tinted little balls that he's throwing in spider-man's direction you like see them sort of soft bounce off the stage uh maybe bounce back on and roll back the other way, but they still, they provoke explosions. I guess they're meant to be bombs. And he has them just like in a little burlap sack he's carrying, like a literal ball sack.

Green Goblin's carrying a ball sack around. Those are supposed to be for a Marvel, they're his pumpkin bombs, Scott. We're both Marvel boys. All right. They're supposed to be little tiny pumpkins that blow up,

we're assuming, unless they change the lore to be Little tiny pumpkins That blow up We're assuming Unless they change the lore To just being like Exploding Nerf balls But no They have to be pumpkin bombs I think so That's never said

Why goblins and pumpkins I guess they're sort of Spooky Because they're both spooky Halloween stuff Could have been skulls Could have been Neck bones

Sure Mike and I Will also be hosting Another show coming up Called Marvel Boys called Marvel Boys. Little Marvel Boys, yeah. Jason doesn't want to put Lil in front of it, and I want to. Right, we're still figuring that

out. That's going to be on NPR's podcast network. That's a very highbrow one, the Marvel Boys. It is today. Well, you make the logo without Lil, and then Mike, you just scrawl it right on there like a little troublemaker. I'm a stinker.

Oh, boy. I think Scott may assault me a little more. Hey, alright. I got you on the same page. I'm a peacemaker. Anyway, oh, I forgot. We're towards the beginning of it. Spider-Man, the first guy you see Spider-Man kill, he, like, snaps his neck.

What? Hold on. You know, like a spider whoa he kills early yeah like the first guy one of those thugs i was talking about he just snaps his neck totally forgot that in my notes uh maybe the most exciting part of the show and i just glossed past it god he takes a life spider-man takes life just sort of silently towards the beginning and then uh it get only uh diminishes from there uh i don't know and then so like three kush bombs or i mean like i'm like kush balls is sort of what i was called a kush uh kush is probably yeah kush sounds like marijuana weed yeah um i don't know he throws a couple foam balls and then one of them misfires and he blows up and then it just sort of ends

it's uh i don't know it's it's it's real lazy every step of it you could tell probably there was a lot of build-up to the premiere and then the actors are giving up already by night five and uh you know they know this is a seasonal thing they're not going to be there forever uh um it's uh yeah i i can only quantify this one as a missamed kick in the dick this uh yeah this is also not too long after uh marvel's bankruptcy issues oh that so they they were not as a carefully guarded brand at the time as they are now

that they're part of the Walt Disney Company. Yeah, they were selling off movie rights, which is why X-Men is at Fox still to this day and Spider-Man is still technically owned by Sony

as far as movies. And all the Fantastic Four issues. And Fox as well. Okay. That's why they were literally like, you'll give us money for some of our bullshit?

Here you go. Here's our bullshit. Do whatever you want with it. we don't give a shit yeah we want the money we we need money and they were bailed out by uh avia rod and ike perlmutter uh who used to own a toy company called toy biz and now they were in the toy biz yeah literally yeah and now like perlmutter rules with an iron fist you You know, I got to say, I have this stereotype of the Marvel movies. I fall on the negative side of these things. I think I say what people say, that it's like they're all like TV shows and they're all sort of the same. But thinking about this way that Marvel used to be, I think I'm appreciating the cleanliness that Marvel has these days. Because this generic rock and Spider-Man's singing Lou Bega and this kind of thing, this is a big sloppy mess,

and I'm glad they steered out of it. However, that being said, I remember thinking about Spider-Man rocks a lot during the premiere of Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, the Broadway musical, because they're aesthetically virtually the same. And even though one is a cookie-cutter stunt show being farted out in front of 900 people every day at Universal Studios, and one is a $65 million circus tragedy, as the Green Goblin says in the show, despite the cost disparities, they're almost the same thing to me. And I think Spider-Man rocks, deserves some credit, and I think you two and I think Bono

and the Edge maybe should kick some royalties over to the people who made the generic off-brand rock that inspired the entire endeavor. Because they were the originators. I would also argue that Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark has a lot of theme park elements, like topical jokes. Really? Because when I saw it, stuff would break down when I saw it. It was a year into the run, and then Green Goblin would have to vamp.

He would have to do something, and then he'd be like, It's like a Shake-Wade. He would pull something up, and he'd be like, It like a shake way like i'm he would like pull something up he'd be like it's like a shake way and like the audience would laugh and i'd be like this is not any different than the genie at the aladdin show a california adventure where he's making topical jokes it's like i don't think most broadway shows i mean there's got to be a few but most broadway shows don't like sub in the latest headlines send up the latest headlines so the green goblin's like picking up a newspaper and like so what's going on what's in the news today they let him they let him they let him riff

he also made a joke about like the stoppage too because like this show would just stop it would be like resetting and you'd like everyone would be like uh they just say that on the pa you would hear the stage manager whoever just say like stop was it still in previews when you saw no i saw it a year into it oh that's right yeah yeah it was it was way into the run like it was after the changes made to the original julie tamor version like they took out that mysterious arachne woman who was like a spider goddess like that was oh yeah spider-man who has dozens of villains, and they're like, well, we gotta invent some. We gotta invent the knife-themed villain Swiss Miss. What do the fans really not want to see?

Yeah. So, no, I saw it, and they still had problems. With all the money spent on Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, this and Spider-Man Rocks still ended up at the same type of thug who is wearing a bright yellow shirt and then kind of like a bowling shirt over it. And like, you know, camo shorts like they both had like the armies of thugs in both of these shows are both basically like the Dell guy. But one of them cost, you know, like 50 times what the other one did. Oh, no.

The expensive yellow shirts. Spider-Man, save me. The drummer and bassist from Smash Mouth are coming after me. Julie Tamar personally inspected every frosted tip of every thug dancer. Anyway, yeah, it's a

kick in the dick. Too bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Watch the video of it anyway. It's pretty fun. Again dick. Too bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But hey, watch the video of it anyway. It's pretty fun. Yeah, again, we'll post all these videos in our, what, metadata and the social media. Jason does that stuff. I don't know how it works. On our LinkedIn.

And the show notes. Jason? All right. Yeah, so my show is The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad at Universal's Islands of Adventure in Orlando, Florida. Sindbad. Sindbad. Which is what I recall. Say that D.

There's a D in it? Is that a D? No. I'm pretty sure. Or I've seen it both ways. But I saw it with my wife like 10 years ago. And I'm pretty sure. Because we were talking about it ever since.

Sindbad. Is this some like getting them off of a copyright? What is this D about? No. I think that's because that's one of the things about this show is there is no copyright. I see. So this is Sindbad the Sailor from the many centuries old Middle Eastern story cycle, the seven voyages of Sindbad. Now, this is the eighth voyage of Sindbad. This is a brand new voyage for the viewing public. Episode seven of Star Wars. Hold on here.

Scott is correct. It is Sinbad. S-I-N-D-B-A-D. The eighth voyage of Sinbad. I was Googling it. There were those results without the D. I don't think a lot of people don't know that, but it was so odd, we made a note of it. We were talking about Sinbad all day. This is also like doing a little research of it it

seems to be i i always thought of it as part of the uh 1001 arabian night stories and it seems like there's some debate of like well older versions of those stories don't have these in it but then like there's you know manuscripts uh for more recent manuscripts where they are featured so but the big thing here is that sinbad is copyright free baby he's in the public domain sinbad is especially copyright and sinbad is even less fewer lettered brother um this is in the Lost Continent section of the park, which, again, you may as well call it public domain land because it's got a ride based on Atlantis.

It's got some Greek myths in there. Poseidon and stuff. It's got, like, yeah, an Arabian marketplace and mythos. Often voted one of the best theme park restaurants in the world but this is the part of islands of adventure where they're like we gotta put some stuff we're running out of money to license stuff what can we make that we don't have to pay another company money and they got like jack and jill in there they got mary had Little Lamb. Merlin. Hansel and Gretel Town.

There was a part of the park called Merlinwood, and that got absorbed into the wizarding world of Harry Potter. We talked about earlier the Dwelling Dragons got absorbed and rethemed into Harry Potter. But Sinbad is still going strong. Since the opening of the park in 1998, I believe I said, Sinbad is still running pretty much from what I could tell unchanged. I mean, I've seen it a lot.

And the setup of the show is that Sinbad has to rescue the Princess Amora from the evil witch Mazaria. But Sinbad's not alone. No, he's got help from his bumbling old friend, Kabob. That's right. They named the comic relief Kabob. And he's a great, he's a jolly husky man who's like the most like ham-fisted comic relief.

Here are some of the things Kabob does. He picks up a giant golden chain necklace and says, I pity the fool, like Mr. T. There is a thing where a bad guy runs at him and he picks up a red cape like a bullfighter and yells ole and they play like bullfighting music he does a Robert De Niro you talking to me

there's a okay so the show starts with like Sinbad ziplines in to this giant cave that's full of treasure and it's got a waterfall and a part of a ship, and then Kabob stumbles in,

and he's very horny for treasure. He really wants that treasure, and they see a giant jewel at the top of the cave, and that jewel is called the Sultan's Heart, and they're talking about this cave, and they fight off a guy. And then from beneath the stage, a beautiful woman appears.

And that's the princess. It's like, you have to rescue me. I'm being kept here. And he tries to go get her, but there's a moat of water in front of the princess. And it like 10 foot tall flames shoot out from the water. And Sinbad goes and gets the jewel. And then there's an explosion and the jewel disappears.

And a bunch of steam shoots out and the princess disappears. And she's replaced by an evil witch, the evil witch Mizaria. And this is the point when Kabob says the line, give a girl a big rock and she turns into a witch typical oh is this line still in the show still in the show the video i watch is from 2014 so this line has been in there yeah but this line has been in there for a long time since 1998 it's still going strong this comedy of like boy wives huh yeah it's baffling. There's this comedy of, like, boy, wives, huh? Yeah. That is baffling to me.

That's for the dads in the audience. Yeah. The dads love those jokes. Yeah, I mean, these stunt shows are very broad, and they have to appeal 8 to 80, so, like, the comedy is very on the nose. So, like, all of this is happening. A couple of, like, zombie-looking guys come out, and they sword fight with Sinbad. I've been confused, because you have been saying

Sinbad when you should be saying Sindbad. Sindbad sounds so weird to me. We've got to, my fair lady, this situation, keep on his grammar. I know, I've been very upset every time you say Sindbad. Did I say the right reference? Is that what I was...

Sorry, continue. Throughout all of these hijinks there's also like here's a zombie guy and he's got a bo staff and he's really good at spinning that bo staff and they like you know push him out he they defeat him and then here's another guy and he's got a big axe and he's really good with the axe so like every guy's got a different thing he does. And this is a big set. Like, this is on a big set. So, like, characters are, like, coming in and out.

They're swinging on ropes. There's fist fights. There's sword fights. Here's some more kebab stuff. Kebab does a lot of very silly dances. He says, hello, governor, like, unprovoked at least once or twice. What does his normal voice sound like, if you wouldn't mind giving us a little bit of it? Or could you compare it to a different character?

Like a real ham. Like it's like a Kevin James kind of like, hey, what's in there? We got to get this treasure. So he's like a New Yorker, a street-tough New Yorker kind of guy. Yeah, he's kind of like, yeah. I guess that's what you'd say. Like, oh, yeah, look at all this treasure. He definitely does go, oh, no, you didn't, at least twice in the show. I feel like if Kebab was being played on Broadway,

it would be by a Mr. Josh Gad. Am I wrong? Yeah, this could be a Gad or a Dan Fogler type. That's his name, right? Yeah, that's him. From Balls of Fury? Yeah. Right, that was the ping pong movie?

Sure. We can't be sure that one of them was not once. Josh Gad is possibly the original kebab. Josh Gad could possibly be the originated kebab. With Josh Gad as kebab. Somebody check the logs at islands of adventure um he he says say hello to my little friend once um he gets after a you talking to me both of them yeah and then i we're going we don't need roads and a uh i'll have what she's having and uh yeah um well he gets and he gets hit in the yeah and he gets hit in the nuts

he gets hit in the nuts and falls off stage at one point and yells I'm okay which happens again there's a call back to that right at the end of the show he falls in a hole and yells I'm okay and he does the entire

Austin Powers, Mustafa, Will Ferrell um very badly burr they just they just steal it wholesale yeah um now kebab there is a very cool sequence with kebab where he's they're like when they're first looking around the cave he's uh hooked up to a wire and there he he says like well what could go wrong or something like that? And they, like, pull him. Like, he flies, like, 20 feet in the air backwards and, like, disappears for a few minutes. So that's kind of cool.

Like, that was neat. Honestly, other than a couple of the things that sound very outdated as far as, like, gender politics or something, this one sounds the best of all of them to me. I mean, it's got a lot of the stuff that you want in a stunt show. Yeah, there's a lot of fighting. There's a ton of explosions. And I'm really compelled by this kebab character to be very frank with you.

Once you get over the fact that it's like, oh, I can't believe they're doing a, you know, Sinbad and they called the sidekick kebab. I certainly would maybe rename him. Almost entirely for when kebab's really talking a lot at the beginning, so that Sinbad can go, shh, kebab. How about that? How about that little piece of business?

Of course. After 18 minutes of waiting, they give you that sweet kebab meat that you've been after. Can I ask a question? How many more pages of notes on kebab do you have in there? Scrolling and scrolling. So that's most of the kebab stuff, except for kebab gets to do the interchangeable

topical jokes. Okay, well that brings it all home, so let's hear it. Okay, so when the witch first shows up, again, I watched a 2014 video. It's like, what is this, Lorena Bobbitt? He goes, Lady Gaga?

I'm sure. Wait, why? Is she dressed in an unorthodox manner? She's kind of dressed like the witch from, what's the witch in Sleeping Beauty that Angelina Jolie was in? Maleficent. Yeah, she's kind of got like a Maleficent vibe. Okay. So she's wearing a very crazy costume. Lady Gaga.

And he goes, Lady Gaga, something like explodes unexpectedly or someone appears unexpectedly. And he goes, that was more shocking than the ice bucket challenge. Oof. Yeah, so real thing of its time. Wow. These are all just kind of taking the wind out of me. I feel like I'm getting socked in the stomach with each joke. These are, like, very, and we will do a full episode on the Disney California Adventure Aladdin show that ran for many years. And the genie did a rapid fire succession of these topical jokes.

And every time I would take someone there, they would have Scott's reaction where they hated it with a fury. And I think maybe even the first time I saw it, I did. But then the second time I saw it, I loved it. And then I would try to go back every time I could to see. So what you're telling me is something that I do hate, but now perversely love. On the Universal tour, there was a thing where the cars from Fast and the Furious dance around on these robotic arms that might still be there. I'm not totally sure.

But in the script, they gave you a topical joke to say which you often you were free to think of your own but in this one they had here's a zinger and please mandatorily use it and it was they've the cars kind of dance a little bit and then it finishes and you say take that dancing with the stars take that uh-huh they also dance to uh gasolina which was very popular daddy yankees gasolina i got so sick of gasolina during that like so many days of me just like staring out the window i wonder what i'm gonna have for dinner just like joylessly listening to this song and then having to spring back up hey all right take that dancing with the stars suck up the hate for until you play the next clip um so yeah i think that's most of that's most of the gags and then uh yeah there's a lot of fighting oh there's some funny gimmicks in the show where like they clearly have a lot

there's a lot of stunt performers uh uh working this because like they uh uh like there's a big there's a couple of big pots and like kebab sticks his hand in one and a hand comes out the other uh uh so there's clearly two people doing that like they use that in a few different ways where like someone tosses in a bag of treasure or tosses in a sword in one and it pops out of the other and someone grabs it from the air so that's kind of neat and then the but the big notable thing for this is that it pressing out teeth thinks it's more than kind of i think it's really i think it's neat uh and yeah the fight the fights uh are pretty good but the big notable thing for this is that it shares the uh stunt from the the end of the Waterworld show where someone like shoots like in this case, they shoot a bunch of sparks out of a staff that the Sultan's heart is on.

They shoot it at the witch and there's an explosion up where she is standing. She disappears for like one second is clearly replaced by someone in a Nomex fireproof suit. They burst into flames and do like a 20-foot fall into a pool of water. And then there's a ton of explosions and everyone claps. Okay, yeah. Yeah. Which I've watched a lot of videos of this moment from this particular show, searching for an element that is almost always missing,

except for the particular day that I went to. That thing is really cool. Somebody on fire falls into a lake, a bunch of explosions go off. But the day I went, as that happened, the guy playing Sinbad held up his sword and went, Yeah! Which was the dumbest, funniest man uh sorry if i blow the mic it's uh boy watching a guy really stupidly yell yeah oh man i also i'd like to point out something

about my sindbad experience which is um i don't know if this is always the case either but my recollection is that he said the word crap a lot, and damn. It was like, I'm sick of this damn crap. Like they were doing a lot of PG-13 swearing. I think you saw someone who was, it was their last day, and they were having some fun, because it's pretty PG. I don't even care, man. What are they going to do, fire me?

Yeah. Fire my crap damn ass? I don't care. I man. What are they going to do? Fire me? Yeah. Fire my crap damn ass? I don't care. I'm saying it. Yeah. It made me, like, also to mention my show Moonbeam City, we said crap in it a lot, and it was all sort of a nod to the Sinbad show, because I really liked, like, being edgy by saying crap.

I really enjoyed. That's some, like, 13-year-old attitude that's really fun. I've had enough of your crap, Dad. I think crap is an underrated profanity for that reason. It's a stepping stone profanity. Yeah. Man, I wish I saw that version. I was like, oh, crap.

I think I saw the best performance ever, which went crap and yeah. I think I saw the best performance ever, which went crap and yeah. I think you did. But yeah, I mean, I have to say, this is a solid stunt. I've seen this a lot over the years. My family has gone to Universal Orlando a lot. And this is a nice way to get out of the sun, take a break, see a little stunt show.

Hey, that's a good... Still going. The best element any stunt show can have is air conditioning or shade yeah many of these complaints will be forgiven with the proper amount of shade so are you saying on the scale of and i've already forgotten the two choices there are three choices perfect aerial flip there you go missamed kick in the dick i feel like we're going perfect aerial flip i think we're going perfect aerial flip uh yeah But it's fair to say that you are so tired on a vacation that if there was just an empty room with a half-open bottle of water and some air conditioner, you would give it the exact same score. Yeah, I absolutely would.

Well, look, also, too, if it was in a I Love Islands of Adventure, I have a lot of affection for that park. So I am probably biased. The public domain that lies within. That's what they should have called the park. The public, Universal's public domain. Real quick, I do want to say,

this is the picture they have of Sinbad on the Universal website. And I know this is a visual thing. I'll put it on Twitter. Does this Sinbad look a little like the actor Michael Stolberg? What, from Serious Man? Yeah.

What? Like with a mustache? Hold on. I'm looking at him. This Sinbad looks kind of gruff. I'll give you my first reaction. No. Oh, okay.

I don't think he looks... I think he looks more like Michael Showalter. Maybe. It's a weird looking Sinbad, though, right? Like this Sinbad... My first reaction is, who is Michael Stolberg? He's the lead actor, serious man. He is the serious man.

He's in a couple of Woody Allen movies. The original cast, Michael Stolberg and Josh Gad. A high pedigree of Sinbad. Eighth voyage of Sinbad live at Islands of Public Domain. Yeah. I got all the official names right didn't i okay um well what are we i mean on that note should we uh let's let's just be right back sure all right well on that note uh you have survived podcast the ride stunt show

yes uh there's so many stunt you've been pummeled with stunt shows and tropes and characters today. So if you have a favorite stunt show at any park, regional park, like the weirder the better. Especially, or if you've participated in one, that's something. Knowing that a lot of former stunt show participants are posting videos of their excellent performances, please make us aware. Tweet at us. Gram at us. Linkweet at us. Gram at us. Link in at us.

Yeah. And that's professional stunt performers and just the people they pull from the audience to sometimes react to stuff. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. Tweet at us and tell us what you did. And if you're a Batman stunt show host, Roderick Dean Wells,

please contact the podcast The Ride Twitter or Instagram because we would like to interview you. And we'd like to know why your career didn't go the way of Josh Gad's. Original kebab, Josh Gad. Original kebab. Confirmed fact. Josh Gad. We took a little break that we cut out, but we looked it up, and Josh Gad was the original kebab. That's true.

And I would describe learning that fact as more shocking than the ice kebab. That's true. And I would describe learning that fact as more shocking than the ice bucket challenge. Thanks for listening. Thank you to Feral Audio. And we'll see you next time. See you next time. At Podcast The Ride on some social medias. Goodbye.

Bye-bye.